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by William Blum

The jingo bells are ringing

"Who really poses the greatest danger to world peace: Iraq, North Korea or the United States?" asked Time magazine in an online poll in early 2003, shortly before the US invasion of Iraq. The final results were: North Korea 6.7%, Iraq 6.3%, the United States 86.9%; 706,842 total votes cast.[1]

Imagine that following North Korea's recent underground nuclear test neither the United States nor any other government cried out that the sky was falling. No threat to world peace and security was declared by the White House or any other house. It was thus not the lead story on every radio and TV broadcast and newspaper page one. The UN Security Council did not unanimously condemn it. Nor did NATO. "What should we do about him?" was not America Online's plaintive all-day headline alongside a photo of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

Who would have known about the explosion, even if it wasn't baby-sized? Who would have cared? But because all this fear mongering did in fact take place, www.vote.com was able to pose the question -- "North Korea's Nuclear Threat: Is It Time For An International Economic Blockade To Make Them Stop?" -- and hence compile a 93% "yes" vote. It doesn't actually take too much to win hearts and mindless. Media pundit Ben Bagdikian once wrote: "While it is impossible for the media to tell the population what to think, they do tell the public what to think about."

So sometime in the future, the world might, or might not, have nine
states possessing nuclear weapons instead of eight. So what? Do you
know of all the scary warnings the United States issued about a
nuclear-armed Soviet Union? A nuclear-armed China? And the non-warnings
about a nuclear-armed Israel? There were no scary warnings or threats
against ally Pakistan for the nuclear-development aid it gave to North
Korea a few years ago, and Washington has been busy this year enhancing
the nuclear arsenal of India, events which the world has paid little
attention to, because the United States did not mount a campaign to
tell the world to worry. There's still only one country that's used
nuclear weapons on other people, but we're not given any warnings about
them.

In 2005, Secretary of War Rumsfeld, commenting about
large Chinese military expenditures, said: "Since no nation threatens
China, one wonders: Why this growing investment?"[2]
The following year, when asked if he believed the Venezuelans'
contention that their large weapons buildup was strictly for defense,
Rumsfeld replied: "I don't know of anyone threatening Venezuela -
anyone in this hemisphere."[3]
Presumably, the honorable secretary, if asked, would say that no one
threatens North Korea either. Or Iran. Or Syria. Or Cuba. He may even
believe this. However, beginning with the Soviet Union, as one country
after another joined the nuclear club, Washington's ability to threaten
them or coerce them declined, which is of course North Korea's
overriding reason for trying to become a nuclear power; or Iran's if it
goes that route.

Undoubtedly there are some in the Bush
administration who are not unhappy about the North Korean test. A
nuclear North Korea with a "crazy" leader serves as a rationale for
policies the White House is pursuing anyway, like anti-missile systems,
military bases all over the map, ever-higher military spending, and all
the other nice things a respectable empire bent on world domination
needs. And of course, important elections are imminent and getting real
tough with looney commies always sells well.

Did I miss
something or is there an international law prohibiting only North Korea
from testing nuclear weapons? And just what is the danger? North Korea,
even if it had nuclear weapons and delivery systems, and there's no
evidence that it does, is of course no threat to attack anyone with
them. Like Iraq under Saddam Hussein, North Korea is not suicidal.

And
just for the record, contrary to what we've been told a million times,
there's no objective evidence that North Korea invaded South Korea on
that famous day of June 25, 1950. The accusations came only from the
South Korean and US governments, neither being a witness to the event,
neither with the least amount of credible impartiality. No, the United
Nations observers did not observe the invasion. Even more important, it
doesn't really matter much which side was the first to fire a shot or
cross the border on that day because whatever happened was just the
latest incident in an already-ongoing war of several years.[4]

Operation Because We Can

Captain
Ahab had his Moby Dick. Inspector Javert had his Jean Valjean. The
United States has its Fidel Castro. Washington also has its Daniel
Ortega. For 27 years, the most powerful nation in the world has found
it impossible to share the Western Hemisphere with one of its poorest
and weakest neighbors, Nicaragua, if the country's leader was not in
love with capitalism.

From
the moment the Sandinista revolutionaries overthrew the US-supported
Somoza dictatorship in 1979, Washington was concerned about the rising
up of that long-dreaded beast -- "another Cuba". This was war. On the
battlefield and in the voting booths. For almost 10 years, the American
proxy army, the Contras, carried out a particularly brutal insurgency
against the Sandinista government and its supporters. In 1984,
Washington tried its best to sabotage the elections, but failed to keep
Sandinista leader Ortega from becoming president. And the war
continued. In 1990, Washington's electoral tactic was to hammer home
the simple and clear message to the people of Nicaragua: If you
re-elect Ortega all the horrors of the civil war and America's economic
hostility will continue. Just two months before the election, in
December 1989, the United States invaded Panama for no apparent reason
acceptable to international law, morality, or common sense (The United
States naturally called it "Operation Just Cause"); one likely reason
it was carried out was to send a clear message to the people of
Nicaragua that this is what they could expect, that the US/Contra war
would continue and even escalate, if they re-elected the Sandinistas.

It
worked; one cannot overestimate the power of fear, of murder, rape, and
your house being burned down. Ortega lost, and Nicaragua returned to
the rule of the free market, striving to roll back the progressive
social and economic programs that had been undertaken by the
Sandinistas. Within a few years widespread malnutrition, wholly
inadequate access to health care and education, and other social ills,
had once again become a widespread daily fact of life for the people of
Nicaragua.

Each presidential election since then has pitted
perennial candidate Ortega against Washington's interference in the
process in shamelessly blatant ways. Pressure has been regularly
exerted on certain political parties to withdraw their candidates so as
to avoid splitting the conservative vote against the Sandinistas. US
ambassadors and visiting State Department officials publicly and
explicitly campaign for anti-Sandinista candidates, threatening all
kinds of economic and diplomatic punishment if Ortega wins, including
difficulties with exports, visas, and vital family remittances by
Nicaraguans living in the United States. In the 2001 election, shortly
after the September 11 attacks, American officials tried their best to
tie Ortega to terrorism, placing a full-page ad in the leading
newspaper which declared, among other things, that: "Ortega has a
relationship of more than thirty years with states and individuals who
shelter and condone international terrorism."[5] That
same year a senior analyst in Nicaragua for the international pollsters
Gallup was moved to declare: "Never in my whole life have I seen a
sitting ambassador get publicly involved in a sovereign country's
electoral process, nor have I ever heard of it."[6]

Additionally,
the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) -- which would like the
world to believe that it's a private non-governmental organization,
when it's actually a creation and an agency of the US government --
regularly furnishes large amounts of money and other aid to
organizations in Nicaragua which are opposed to the Sandinistas. The
International Republican Institute (IRI), a long-time wing of NED,
whose chairman is Arizona Senator John McCain, has also been active in
Nicaragua creating the Movement for Nicaragua, which has helped
organize marches against the Sandinistas. An IRI official in Nicaragua,
speaking to a visiting American delegation in June of this year,
equated the relationship between Nicaragua and the United States to
that of a son to a father. "Children should not argue with their
parents." she said.

With the 2006 presidential election in
mind, one senior US official wrote in a Nicaraguan newspaper last year
that should Ortega be elected, "Nicaragua would sink like a stone". In
March, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the US Ambassador to the UN under Reagan and
a prime supporter of the Contras, came to visit. She met with members
of all the major Sandinista opposition parties and declared her belief
that democracy in Nicaragua "is in danger" but that she had no doubt
that the "Sandinista dictatorship" would not return to power. The
following month, the American ambassador in Managua, Paul Trivelli, who
openly speaks of his disapproval of Ortega and the Sandinista party,
sent a letter to the presidential candidates of conservative parties
offering financial and technical help to unite them for the general
election of November 5. The ambassador stated that he was responding to
requests by Nicaraguan "democratic parties" for US support in their
mission to keep Daniel Ortega from a presidential victory. The visiting
American delegation reported: "In a somewhat opaque statement Trivelli
said that if Ortega were to win, the concept of governments recognizing
governments wouldn't exist anymore and it was a 19th century concept
anyway. The relationship would depend on what his government put in
place." One of the fears of the ambassador likely has to do with Ortega
talking of renegotiating CAFTA, the trade agreement between the US and
Central America, so dear to the hearts of corporate globalizationists.

Then,
in June, US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said it was
necessary for the Organization of American States (OAS) to send a
mission of Electoral Observation to Nicaragua "as soon as possible" so
as to "prevent the old leaders of corruption and communism from
attempting to remain in power" (though the Sandinistas have not
occupied the presidency, only lower offices, since 1990).

The
explicit or implicit message of American pronouncements concerning
Nicaragua is often the warning that if the Sandinistas come back to
power, the horrible war, so fresh in the memory of Nicaraguans, will
return. The London Independent reported in September that "One of the
Ortega billboards in Nicaragua was spray-painted 'We don't want another
war'. What it was saying was that if you vote for Ortega you are voting
for a possible war with the US."[7]
Per
capita income in Nicaragua is $900 a year; some 70% of the people live
in poverty. It is worth noting that Nicaragua and Haiti are the two
nations in the Western Hemisphere that the United States has intervened
in the most, from the 19th century to the 21st, including long periods
of occupation. And they are today the two poorest in the hemisphere,
wretchedly so.

Don't look back

The cartoon
awfulness of the Bush crime syndicate's foreign policy is enough to
make Americans nostalgic for almost anything that came before. And as
Bill Clinton parades around the country and the world associating
himself with "good" causes, it's enough to evoke yearnings in many
people on the left who should know better. So here's a little reminder
of what Clinton's foreign policy was composed of. Hold on to it in case
Lady Macbeth runs in 2008 and tries to capitalize on lover boy's
record.

Yugoslavia:
The United States played the principal role during the 1990s in the
destruction of this nation, republic by republic, the low point of
which was 78 consecutive days of terrible bombing of the population in
1999. No, it was not an act of "humanitarianism". It was pure
imperialism, corporate globalization, getting rid of "the last
communist government in Europe", keeping NATO alive by giving it a
function after the end of the Cold War. There was no moral issue behind
US policy. The ousted Yugoslav leader, Slobodan Milosevic, is routinely
labeled "authoritarian" (Compared to whom? To the Busheviks?), but that
had nothing to do with it. The great exodus of the people of Kosovo
resulted from the bombing, not Serbian "ethnic cleansing"; and while
saving Kosovars the Clinton administration was servicing Turkish ethnic
cleansing of Kurds. NATO admitted (sic) to repeatedly and deliberately
targeting civilians; amongst other war crimes.[8]

Somalia:
The 1993 intervention was presented as a mission to help feed the
starving masses. But the US soon started taking sides in the clan-based
civil war and tried to rearrange the country's political map by
eliminating the dominant warlord, Mohamed Aidid, and his power base. On
many occasions, US helicopters strafed groups of Aidid's supporters or
fired missiles at them; missiles were fired into a hospital because of
the belief that Aidid's forces had taken refuge there; also a private
home, where members of Aidid's political movement were holding a
meeting; finally, an attempt by American forces to kidnap two leaders
of Aidid's clan resulted in a horrendous bloody battle. This last
action alone cost the lives of more than a thousand Somalis, with many
more wounded.

It's questionable that getting food to hungry
people was as important as the fact that four American oil giants held
exploratory rights to large areas of Somali land and were hoping that
US troops would put an end to the prevailing chaos which threatened
their highly expensive investments.[9]

Ecuador:
In 2000, downtrodden Indian peasants rose up once again against the
hardships of US/IMF globalization policies, such as privatization. The
Indians were joined by labor unions and some junior military officers
and their coalition forced the president to resign. Washington was
alarmed. American officials in Quito and Washington unleashed a blitz
of threats against Ecuadorian government and military officials. And
that was the end of the Ecuadorian revolution.[10]

Sudan:
The US deliberately bombed and destroyed a pharmaceutical plant in
Khartoum in 1998 in the stated belief that it was a plant for making
chemical weapons for terrorists. In actuality, the plant produced about
90 percent of the drugs used to treat the most deadly illnesses in that
desperately poor country; it was reportedly one of the biggest and best
of its kind in Africa. And had no connection to chemical weapons.[11]

Sierra Leone:
In 1998, Clinton sent Jesse Jackson as his special envoy to Liberia and
Sierra Leone, the latter being in the midst of one of the great horrors
of the 20th century -- an army of mostly young boys, the Revolutionary
United Front (RUF), going around raping and chopping off people's arms
and legs. African and world opinion was enraged against the RUF, which
was committed to protecting the diamond mines they controlled. Liberian
president Charles Taylor was an indispensable ally and supporter of the
RUF and Jackson was an old friend of his. Jesse was not sent to the
region to try to curtail the RUF's atrocities, nor to hound Taylor
about his widespread human rights violations, but instead, in June
1999, Jackson and other American officials drafted entire sections of
an accord that made RUF leader, Foday Sankoh, the vice president of
Sierra Leone, and gave him official control over the diamond mines, the
country's major source of wealth.[12]

Iraq:
Eight more years of the economic sanctions which Clinton's National
Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, called "the most pervasive sanctions
every imposed on a nation in the history of mankind",[13] absolutely
devastating every aspect of the lives of the Iraqi people, particularly
their health; truly a weapon of mass destruction.

Cuba:
Eight more years of economic sanctions, political hostility, and giving
haven to anti-Castro terrorists in Florida. In 1999, Cuba filed a suit
against the United States for $181.1 billion in compensation for
economic losses and loss of life during the first forty years of this
aggression. The suit holds Washington responsible for the death of
3,478 Cubans and the wounding and disabling of 2,099 others.

Only the imperialist powers have the ability to enforce sanctions and are therefore always exempt from them.

As
to Clinton's domestic policies, keep in mind those two beauties: The
"Effective death penalty Act" and the "Welfare Reform Act". And let's
not forget the massacre at Waco, Texas.

Three billion years from amoebas to Homeland Security

"The Department of Homeland Security would like to remind passengers
that you may not take any liquids onto the plane. This includes ice
cream, as the ice cream will melt and turn into a liquid."

This
was actually heard by one of my readers at the Atlanta Airport
recently; he laughed out loud. He informs me that he didn't know what
was more bizarre, that such an announcement was made or that he was the
only person that he could see who reacted to its absurdity.[14]
This is the way it is with societies of people. Like with the
proverbial frog who submits to being boiled to death in a pot of water
if the water is heated very gradually, people submit to one heightened
absurdity and indignation after another if they're subjected to them at
a gradual enough rate. That's one of the most common threads one finds
in the personal stories of Germans living in the Third Reich. This
airport story is actually an example of an absurdity within an
absurdity. Since the "bomb made from liquids and gels" story was
foisted upon the public, several chemists and other experts have
pointed out the technical near-impossibility of manufacturing such a
bomb in a moving airplane, if for no other reason than the necessity of
spending at least an hour or two in the airplane bathroom.

[7] The
remainder of the section on Nicaragua is derived primarily from The
Independent (London), September 6, 2006, and "2006 Nicaraguan Elections
and the US Government Role. Report of the Nicaragua Network delegation
to investigate US intervention in the Nicaraguan elections of November
2006" --
www.nicanet.org/pdf/Delegation%20Report.pdf
See
also: "List of interventions by the United States government in
Nicaragua's democratic process." --
www.nicanet.org/list_of_interventionist_statments.php

[8] Michael Parenti, "To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia" (2000)
Diana Johnstone, "Fool's Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions" (2002)
William Blum, "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower" (2005), see "Yugoslavia" in index.

[9]Rogue State, pp. 204-5

[10] Ibid., pp. 212-3

[11] William Blum, "Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire", chapter 7